Francis Bacon Quotes

Consistency is the foundation of virtue.

I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

Perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures.

It's not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

It has well been said that the arch-flatterer, with whom all petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.

States, as great engines, move slowly.

It is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.

All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

Fortune makes him fool, whom she makes her darling.

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.

I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.

In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.

So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top.

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people`s plates.

By far the best proof is experience.

By this means we presume we have established for ever, a true and legitimate marriage between the Empirical and Rational faculty; whose fastidious and unfortunate divorce and separation hath troubled and disordered the whole race and generation of mankind.

It's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

There is no doubt but men of genius and leisure may carry our method to greater perfection, but, having had long experience, we have found none equal to it for the commodiousness it affords in working with the Understanding.

Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.

Such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this-that men despair and think things impossible.

It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.

Wise sayings are not only for ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby knots in business are pierced and discovered.

Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really interesting in the beauty of its patterns or its shapes.

We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?

The worst men often give the best advice.

A man who contemplates revenge keeps his wounds green.

Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down.

For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others.

There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.

For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man.

I'm just trying to make images as accurately as possible off my nervous system as I can.

If a man's wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores, splitters of hairs.

I usually accept bribes from both sides so that tainted money can never influence my decision.

Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.

It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands

For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.

All painting is an accident. But it's also not an accident, because one must select what part of the accident one chooses to preserve.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth . . . and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.